A cynical commentary about developments in the South African financial markets and the incomprehensible activities and pronouncements of bureaucrats and politicians.

Friday, 12 February 2016

NURSING GRUDGES

The markets are looking unafraid and
even quite strong in places today. Obviously investors took to their beds early
last night and didn’t watch the broadcast from Cape Town. The displays of
disgraceful and childish behaviour both inside and outside the parliament building
were far more revealing about our nation than a speech from Number 1. Anyone
living in this country already knows or at least has an opinion about the State
of the Nation. Those with a season ticket to the first class suites on the
gravy train will undoubtedly say it is good. For the rest of us our estimations
will range from the desperate through hurt and bafflement to the deeply
saddened and disappointed. It must take a special kind of blinkered obstinacy
not to see that we are in a really bad place and in dire need of wise
leadership.

The century old compromise of
using two different cities for the executive and legislative centres of
national government has always been an expensive luxury. The semi-annual traditionally
named “zoo-train” to transport the grand panjandrums from Pretoria to Cape Town
and back are now a distant memory. It was inevitable that consolidation ought
one day to happen and last night JZ told us that MPs will no longer have to
fear the Cape winters. To what extent this is a cost-saving exercise and not really
a punishment on the Western Cape Province for not supporting the ruling party
is debatable. One piece of good news should be that the government will be able
to demonstrate its solidarity with the asinine #Rhodesmustfall campaign and rid
itself of Cecil John’s magnificent estate in the mother city. Cape Town should immediately
begin lobbying for the return of Groote Schuur since there is now no call for a
presidential palace under the mountain.

It’s rather scary that the Young
Nurses Indaba can display so much ignorance and hatred in one statement. In
rejecting the traditional white nurses’ uniform, their spokesman and founder asserted
that Florence Nightingale’s work ethic robbed nurses of the professional courtesy
they demand from their bosses. What this actually means is anyone’s guess but
the further claim that the absence of colour in their uniform was holding the
profession back from transformation is pretty clear. The Indaba wants neither
their uniform nor the nurses wearing them to be white.

The rapid recent escalation of
anti-white hate-speech is intolerable and alarming and to a great extent pointless.
Except when disguised as tax-payers, whom the masses certainly can’t currently do
without, white people are a small and shrinking minority in the country with
little influence and almost no powers. In vain we await a stern government response
to demands that whites must either leave or die and presumably take our malign
inventions and chattels like science and technology with us. Demographic trends
show that it won’t be all that long until the wishes of these extremists are
granted and the paradise that could have been shared and enjoyed by all South Africans
of whatever origin will no longer exist. How very very sad.

Who is suddenly buying gold? In
dollars it is at a one year high and compared to all other commodities (of which,
the purists insist, gold is merely one) it is blasting into the stratosphere.
Thanks to our dodgy currency the rand price of the metal is well into all-time
high territory. A Krugerrand will now cost you R19 000, double what it was
just 6 years ago. This is a very interesting development and one to watch.

It is always interesting when the
cameraman aims at the rows of padded seats outside the presidential box at the
cricket stadium. The first reaction is just who are all those guys and what do
they do for the game? The next is to weigh up whether the benefits of a free seat
in the shade behind the wicket plus complimentary bar and buffet outweighs the
misery of having to wear a tie all day. Hmm. It would be worth trying.